I was reading an opinion piece in the New York Times Science section on Awe, a specialty of Dacher Keltner’s. He is director of the Greater Good Science Center at UCBerkeley. The center studies positive emotions and awe is Keltner’s latest baby. Roughly defined, awe is the feeling of reverence mixed with wonder or fear. Keltner says that awe can be learned. In my experience, it comes upon you. I have felt it in nature most often, but never in the circumstances under which I felt it this past week.
How many people do you know who have experienced ecstacy or awe in an MRI machine? I did on a recent morning. I have been suffering with hip and leg pain that has made walking increasingly difficult (nevermind sitting and lying down). I haven’t gotten much attention to my weekly and sometimes daily pleas for help from my healthcare system. My primary care doc has had covid and then everyone in her family got covid. The system itself has been overloaded with covid and flu cases all during the fall and early winter. My doc sent me videos of exercises for sciatica, a painful nerve blockage which sends pain from your low back to your ankle. I saw a nurse once. She pronounced what I already knew: sciatica, for which the medical profession can do very little. Then I was referred to a physical therapist. Again, the diagnosis was sciatica and the exercises prescribed followed that diagnosis. I did the exercises described in the videos and the exercises prescribed by the physical therapist but nothing worked to ease the pain. In fact, the pain got worse.
Finally, last week, I was called to make an appointment for an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). I asked “How can you do it when my left hip is artificial/has metal in it?” The schedular said that it wouldn’t be a problem. A friend, much more versed in things medical, told me that the reason an MRI is safe for those of us with joint replacements is that those replacements are made of titanium and porcelain, neither of which are magnetic.
I arrived at 7:25 in Richmond for my early morning appointment and was told I had the wrong day. In tears, I begged the receptionist to help me get another appointment that same day. She sent me to the phone and another schedular who said “If you can get to Oakland by 8:15, we’ll do it here.”
My husband drove. He used to be a scary driver. Now he is slow and cautious. Not exactly what I wanted in the rush hour race to get to Oakland Medical Center. But we made it and I was taken, in my front to back flannel hospital gown, into the cold garage where the MRI machine is parked.
I was wrapped in a warm blanket, ear plugs inserted into my ears, and mask (with no metal) put over my face. As I slid into the tube I had my first inkling of the feelings to come. “At last,” I thought. We will learn something that can move this condition forward.”
In the tube, with all the banging and musical blasts, I felt a peace I had not felt since early fall. “All will be well,” I chanted to myself. I felt surrounded by the presence or presences (my massage therapist calls them my angels) of arms enfolding me. “This is good,” I cried, silently.
Even though I couldn’t walk at all when I was removed from the tube, I continued to feel happy and at peace.
The results, sent to me hours later showed serious deterioration to my lower spine with blockages of nerves and impassable parts where spinal fluid could not flow. It didn’t take long for appointments to be requested at the spinal clinic. I have hope for the first time since the pain started in early November. All will be well because of my incarceration in a tube where I had the spiritual experience of awe.
